[Coco] Wordprocessor

[Francis Swygert]

On 7 January 2023 11:58:34 pm Dan Eicher via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:

> Looking for opinions on what was the best Wordproccessor to take full 
> advantage of a COCO3 with expanded hardware and an RGB monitor.
>
> Thanks,
> Dan
I did a lot of writing on a CoCo3. Nearly everything I wrote for "the world of '68 micros" was done on a CoCo3 then exported to a PC page layout program (Aldus PageMaker, before Adobe screwed it up. The one or two for the CoCo simply didn't make good enough output or were too slow or hard to use). I also wrote my second Rambler (car) related book mainly using a CoCo3. I used Simply Better. VIP is great for letters and shorter documents, but being graphical makes it slow. I wouldn't want to use it for something like I did! SB wasn't WYSIWYG, but it could be set up for a 63 or 64 character screen width which is about right for 10-12 point fonts. It then had a screen where it would make a graphical representation of the page with just lines instead of text. That still lets you know where indents are and paragraphs begin and end. I used the 63/4 width and made my pages that width, which made it easy. It would also do 80 column text (so you could use between 63/4 and 80) that shifted the text screen from side to side as you typed. I found that annoying, so standardized on a width it would display. 

It spell checks and everything else you'd expect in a word processor (except WYSIWYG!). Auto page numbering, etc. Using text only screens made it reasonably fast (considering the speed of the CoCo3!) and allowed for larger documents as graphics screens take up so much memory. I highly recommend it, you can get a copy from TRS-80 Color Computer Archive. 


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TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
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 You can also download a copy of the manual first: 
TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

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TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
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 In both select "S" at the top then scroll down to "Simply Better (CoCoPro!). 






Frank Swygert
 Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service
 803-604-6548